Iraq Heads Back to the Dark Ages for Women’s Rights

Remember how excited we were when we went into Afghanistan and brought rights to women, made it possible for little girls to go to school, and women to vote. I think Bush might have bragged as much about how glorious it was to stop the religious control of women that the Taliban had as he over-related everything to 9/11.

And yet…the same cannot be said to be true of the conditions in Iraq, though Bush certainly made a big deal about women voting in Iraq and the number of women elected to office.

Here’s a little history lesson for you: In 1970, Saddam’s secular Baath party changed the constitution to declare all men and women equal under the law. Between 1970 and March 2003, women in Iraq enjoyed more rights, than women in the surrounding Arab countries.

I’m not saying Saddam wasn’t a bad man. I’d never say that. He did some pretty nasty, evil things, but he also did more for women’s rights in the Middle East than can be said even of the current temporary regime.

With hardline Shia members of the national assembly angling for the country to be named “The Islamic Republic of Iraq”, it seems unlikely that the government won’t go the way of secularism and it will be a theocracy despite Bush’s early claims that we were freeing that country of such bad ideas — though admittedly late last year, he commented that if the Iraqis voted for a theocracy, he’d support it. (flip-flop much?)

There is a concern that the interpretation of Shia law with take women’s rights back more than 30 years. In fact in a BBC article one woman suggested that it might cause people to think that the conditions under the Saddam regime is better.

From the same article:

A strict interpretation of Islamic law would mean that the evidence of a woman in court would count for only half that of a man.

And women would have significantly less say in matters of marriage and divorce.

“We believe in equality between men and women,” says Amal Moussa, a member of the Shia coalition that took the most seats in January’s elections.

“But it is a limited equality. There are Islamic rules that regulate the family and society, and women and men have different rights and duties.”

Polygamy, permissible in Islamic law, has now become a hot political issue.

“Under the current Iraqi law a man has to get the consent of his first wife to marry a second,” says activist Hanaa Edwar. “But I feel religious elements are now trying to encourage polygamy.”

Another major concern for women’s groups is a proposal to phase out a quota system - guaranteeing women a quarter of seats in parliament - which has given Iraqi women more representation than in many other countries in the world.

Women now make up a third of the members of the national assembly elected in January but their representation in future parliaments is likely to decrease dramatically if the quota is removed.

Activists were also up in arms against proposals to have separate Shia Sunni and Christian courts to deal with family matters, although Western diplomats say some later drafts of the constitution may have dropped this clause.

“We are a pluralist society and this constitution will determine our future,” Ms Edwar says.

“It is crucial for us. We cannot allow it to move us backwards and make a mockery of conventions that Iraq has signed on human rights.”

Secular women in Iraq have been through a difficult two years, with relentless violence keeping more and more women indoors and many feeling growing pressure to wear the veil.

Every day, the conditions in Iraq for women are worse. I have heard news stories of women dressed in secular clothes being arrested. We are turning Iraq into the Taliban-run Afghanistan, just as certainly as we’ve turned it into their training ground for terror.

It all makes no sense to me. The whole world has gone insane. Every news story I read or hear makes me want an IV of whatever everyone else is taking that makes them think this all makes sense.

For more information on women’s rights in Iraq, visit this website.

tags: Iraq, Women's Rights, Islam

3 comments

1. on August 1, 2005 at 11:45 am

   BadTux said:

   Actually, the situation in Afghanistan is not so great either. According to an NGO worker whose blog I read, few women even in Kabul will venture far from home, and they will do so only if clad in a burqa. Even one of her own co-workers is scared to go to the market because though she wears the traditional hijab, she does not wear a burqa and some women have had battery acid thrown in their face because of this. The only women not wearing a burqa in the streets of Kabul today are the foreigners.

   And that’s the most cosmopolitan city in Afghanistan, where women have more rights than elsewhere. The Taliban are back in control of two provinces, and of course you know what conditions there are like for women. And the warlords who control the rest of the country are similarly indifferent to women’s rights. If the local mullahs want to impose sharia law, it’s fine with them.

   It appears that the vaunted “improvement” in women’s rights in Afghanistan is as much a lie as Saddam’s possession of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. If I can gather this info by just visiting a few NGO bloggers who are actually on the ground in Afghanistan, you *know* that the CIA and Pentagon have this information. But it doesn’t fit in with Karl Turdblossom’s narrative, so the truth loses and the lie is what gets repeated ad nauseum by the Rove Administration….

   - Badtux the Reality-based Penguin

2. on August 1, 2005 at 3:31 pm

   n. mallory said:

   Thank you for posting this. I have suspected this for some time. I have relied a little too much on the “standard” media in the last year and I’m still feeling my way around the blogosphere and the web now that I’ve settled into my new life as a city girl in a country town…much more time for surfing.

   Women’s rights are one of my big personal causes…probably obviously because of the fact that I am a woman. The state of women’s rights in the Middle East and many other countries scares me. So many American women don’t realize how lucky we are or what sacrifices the women before us made. So many American women take it all for granted.

   It also bothers me that we hear so little of what’s going on in Afghanistan, which is why I’ve suspected for some time that the tides have turned. So much for the liberal-biased media. I’ve noticed that even NPR hardly ever mentions Afghanistan anymore. No wonder the mindless masses are so easily fooled into thinking how grand things are going.

3. on March 2, 2006 at 3:40 pm

   The Naked Truth » Blog Archive » The State of Afghanistan? said:

   […] I’m particularly interested in women’s rights there since the Bush Administration used the oppression of women as one of their reasons for the Afghan invastion. I want to know if things really are better 4 years later. I’ve been told they aren’t and that things are getting bad there. […]

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